Review Blog

Apr 17 2012

Twelve minutes to midnight by Christopher Edge

Noisy Crow, 2012. ISBN 0 85763 050 6.
(Ages: 11+) Recommended. Horror. When Penny Tredwell hires the
actor, Montgomery Maples to tell the stories of her creation,
Montgomery Flinch at a public meeting, she embroils them all in
something which at first is beyond comprehension. A letter form the
director of the Bethlehem Hospital, or Bedlam, as it came to be
known, draws Penny and Monty to its doors, to listen to an
incredible story, one which the doctor hopes the great Montgomery
Flinch can solve. But he does not know that the storyteller Flinch
is in reality Penny, and it is she who writes the stories for The
Penny Dreadful, a magazine taking its readers by the throat
with its stories beyond imagination.
So begins an incredible journey in which Penny gets to meet the
Spider Lady of Kensington, and bitten by one of her spiders, then
poisoned with spider venom sourced from Africa, Penny is taken back
to Bedlam, there to have the dreams which are driving many of its
unmates to insanity, far worse than the illness they first were
incarcerated for, and in some cases, death. And like the others, she
scribbles down predictions about the future, a future the Spider
Lady wants to know about.
A thrilling adventure story, with references to Sherlock Holmes,
this is the first in a series which will entertain and delight its
readers. The setting is fabulously displayed, London in 1899 clearly
brought to life as Penny and her friend, Alfie, try to uncover the
Spider lady's secrets. before the turn of the next millenium.
Fran Knight